The Dubno Maggid, zt”l, relates a Mashal. A poor tailor would wander from village to village and from city to city with his work tools in hand. Wherever he went, he would offer to mend any garments that needing minor repairs. One of his trips brought him to the house of a wealthy man, and he inquired whether he had any garments that needed mending.
The wealthy man brought the tailor into his room and opened his closet which was filled with many different types of clothing. He requested that the tailor inspect the clothing himself and find those that needed to be repaired. The tailor examined the various articles of clothing and saw that they were all in excellent condition. Not one needed any type of mending whatsoever.
In desperation, he took one of the man’s most elegant outfits and undid all of its stitches! When the wealthy man saw what the tailor had done, he wanted to call the police and have him arrested. But the tailor pleaded with him and said that he would quickly repair whatever he had damaged.
The wealthy man agreed, and the tailor worked with eagerness to fix that which he had ruined. When the tailor had finished, he presented the man with a mended garment that appeared just as it did before it had been destroyed.
Seeing that the repair had been completed, the compassionate, wealthy man removed some money from his pocket and handed it to the tailor. The reward that the tailor received was not compensation for his labor, as obviously, he did not deserve anything at all since he was the one who damaged the garment to begin with. Rather, it was Tzedakah and simple kindness, and it was a gift to help a needy man.
The Dubno Maggid explained that all of the reward a person receives for the Mitzvos that he performs, can be categorized as reward for a Mitzvah. But if an individual fasts on Yom Kippur in order to be forgiven for Aveiros and impurities of the heart, or he does Teshuvah, then technically, he is not deserving of any reward for this. After all, he is the one responsible for those flaws, and now he is merely correcting them.
The reward that he inevitably receives for those fasts, however, is an extreme act of Tzedakah and kindness from Hashem. Hashem Bentches us, even when we have to fix what we have damaged!
Reprinted from the Yom Kippur 5782 email of Rabbi Yehuda Winzelberg’s Torah U’ Tefilah.
